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Pilot Adam Danenberg (right) greets passengers boarding a OneJet flight to Pittsburgh at Mitchell International Airport in Milwaukee. OneJet has two round-trip flights each weekday between Milwaukee and Pittsburgh International Airport. OneJet began service in Milwaukee in 2015. The airline's business model focuses on city pairs that do not have nonstop service between them and where the company's research shows there is demand. Mark Hoffman / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Passengers arriving from Pittsburgh are given their bags up on arrival by ground crew members Alissa Richter (yellow vest) and Jeremy Brigham (orange vest) at Mitchell. Pittsburgh was among the top-demanded destinations not served by nonstop flights from Milwaukee, officials at Mitchell said when OneJet established its service in Milwaukee. Mark Hoffman / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

A passenger waits for a OneJet flight on the mostly vacant lower level of the D concourse at Mitchell. The area was formerly used by commuter flights for Midwest Express. Mark Hoffman / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

A passenger waits for a OneJet flight on the mostly vacant lower level of the D concourse at Mitchell. The area was formerly used by commuter flights for Midwest Express. Mark Hoffman / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

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Pilot Adam Danenberg (right) greets passengers boarding a OneJet flight to Pittsburgh at Mitchell International Airport in Milwaukee. OneJet has two round-trip flights each weekday between Milwaukee and Pittsburgh International Airport. OneJet began service in Milwaukee in 2015. The airline's business model focuses on city pairs that do not have nonstop service between them and where the company's research shows there is demand.(Photo: Mark Hoffman / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)Buy Photo

With an investment from a group led by former Midwest Airlines CEO Timothy Hoeksema, OneJet, an airline that caters to business travelers, announced Tuesday it will open an operating base and expand service at Milwaukee's Mitchell International Airport.

OneJet's business model uses small, eight-seat jets to focus on city pairs that have lost nonstop service amid airline industry cutbacks.

The model essentially focuses on business travelers' willingness to buy time.

OneJet says it intends to do in Milwaukee what it has done in Pittsburgh, its only other operating base, said Matthew Maguire, OneJet CEO.

OneJet opened its first base in Pittsburgh in May 2016 with two daily flights. The service has grown and it now offers 160 weekly flights to and from Pittsburgh.

The airline has flown nonstop between Milwaukee and Pittsburgh since 2015. As part of its Milwaukee expansion, OneJet is adding Milwaukee-to-Columbus, Ohio, service and Milwaukee-to-Omaha, Neb., service beginning Nov. 1, Maguire said.

He said OneJet would like to add a significant number of new routes serving Mitchell.

"We could see an expansion probably to another eight to 10 destinations over the course of the next 12 months from Milwaukee," Maguire said.

While not naming any specific routes, Maguire said the airline prefers to fly routes of 300 to 700 miles that do not have round-trip, nonstop service from Milwaukee.

"If you looked at a map within 700 miles and look at the non-served cities, I'll bet you could guess where they might be," he said.

Some of those cities include Indianapolis; Des Moines, Iowa; Louisville, Ky.; Buffalo; Toledo, Ohio; and Memphis, Tenn., to name a few.

"Milwaukee really fits the profile for what we're looking for," Maguire said. "You have a lot of destinations within 300 to 700 miles, routes that currently today do not have nonstop service. These are routes that require people to drive down to O'Hare or make connections through other cities."

Hoeksema said he will serve in an advisory role, working alongside Maguire and other OneJet executives as they expand service in Milwaukee.

Hoeksema and Maguire first started talking about two years ago.

Hoeksema said he and "seven or eight other people ... helped put up some money ... and encouraged Matt to expand in Milwaukee."

'Holes in the market'

Maguire said the company has been following a model of deliberate, managed growth.

"We've been looking for a while as to which base we wanted to open next," he said. "So when we had an opportunity to take an investment from the group of people that Tim organized ... it just made a lot of sense.

"Milwaukee was a hub for many years, and that wasn't by accident."

Milwaukee's time as a hub was led by Midwest Express and later Midwest Airlines, which specialized in going into under-served markets from Milwaukee.

"Really, 33 years ago when we started Midwest Airlines, that was the real key," Hoeksema said. "We saw holes in the market."

Oak Creek-based Midwest stopped flying nearly 10 years ago.

At its peak in 2007, Midwest and its feeder airline Midwest Connect controlled just under 55% of the passenger traffic at Mitchell.

It offered essentially first-class, almost always nonstop, service to cities usually not served by other airlines. Midwest was beloved in Milwaukee.

The economics of the airline industry caught up to Midwest in mid-2008, when the price of crude oil hit $145 a barrel. Suddenly, airlines could no longer afford to fly planes that were not jammed full of people. Midwest's luxurious, two-across seating on midsize, medium-range jet airliners was no longer sustainable.

As jet fuel prices soared, the U.S. economy sank into the Great Recession. Business travel all but evaporated.

The airline industry was ravaged as a result, with numerous carriers either merging or going out of business.

The result was four airlines — American, United, Delta and Southwest — controlling more than 80% of the air travel market in the United States.

Nonstop service to many airports was reduced significantly or simply disappeared.

The remaining airlines "left a relatively large vacuum in the market," Maguire said.

OneJet intends to establish itself in that vacuum, eight seats at a time.

"The key is If you are trying to fill a right-sized, very specific amount of capacity, and you have the only nonstop service in the market — you're only trying to fill eight seats," Maguire said. "That's what makes it sustainable."

'Familiar experience'

OneJet isn't a corporate jet service, Maguire said.

"This service is really built for commercial travelers," he said. "We go from the main terminals. We have the same safety and security credentials as any of the major airlines.

"Once you're onboard, it's a very familiar experience."

OneJet's fares are typically priced $20 to $40 more each way than a fare on a large airline that often involves a connection.

"It's really a value proposition," Hoeksema said. "When you look at business travelers, their time is worth something, and if they can save four to five hours each way in terms of not going through connecting hubs ... and get home that evening, that's a value proposition which makes sense to business travelers."

Maguire said he is confident the expanded service will be successful in Milwaukee.

"It's not magic," Maguire said. "It's just the right business model at the right time."

Joe Taschler covers aviation for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and JSOnline. Contact him at joe.taschler@jrn.com.